Strategic Marketing

Building an effective strategy is vital for any business. A well thought out plan will allow a company to generate revenue, reinvest in growth, and show evidence of traction to stakeholders and outside parties such as investors, partners, and influencers. 

Strategic Marketing consists of four fundamental areas; Strategy, Creative, Technology, and Analytics. These four areas each have their own ecosystems within Strategic Marketing, and as a whole they will make up your overall blueprint to which tactics will be added in order to achieve your goals.

PART 1: STRATEGY

Strategy development begins with a clear understanding of the business's current position, short-term goals, long-term goals, and potential exit strategy. Next, is to take a deep dive into the existing customers, markets, and competition to provide an understanding of customer behaviors, journeys, and segmentation. The knowledge developed will be vital in developing four focal points of a marketing strategy to be integrated cohesively throughout the marketing efforts. The focal points are Lead Generation, Acquisition, Retention, and Go-To-Market. 

Luckily, there is a general process to develop, deploy, and measure the above focal points consisting of Goals, Observe, Formulate, Action, Evaluate.

Goals

The purpose of goal setting is to clarify the vision for marketing. Define the short-term and long-term objectives. Identify the process to complete the objectives. Then disseminate attainable tasks to team members. 

Observe

The intel gathered in the above step will shape the next two steps. In observe, the intent is to review processes, communications, and employee interactions that help or hinder the achievement of the goals. The output from observing will identify a business's marketing strengths, weaknesses, and needs, both internally and externally. 

Formulate

Determine what internal resources can help reach the goals and what external resources are needed. Develop primary approaches, key performance indicators, and then go back and develop alternative strategies. "No plan survives the first contact." 

Action

Structure, resources, and funding should be in place or well underway. If the modified structure still does not support achieving the goals, proceed with caution, or make adjustments. When all is in order, execute the formulated approaches.

Evaluate

Review internal and external issues. Measure performance indicators, measure progress against the planned marketing goals, and if there is no progress, take corrective action.

The Focal Points

Lead Generation

The audience no longer wants their attention bought; they want their attention earned, requiring a modification of traditional lead generation strategies.

Practical strategies to gain a consumer's attention, present product USPs, and compel them to respond has a rhythm and a process. For almost a hundred years, the evolution of the process has, in some regards, remained the same. 

Acquisition

Acquisition has evolved into a catch-all term in managing the overall customer journey. In the strictest of terms, acquisition focuses on post lead generation efforts. While lead generation and acquisition can many times coincide, they are separate in nature. A solid customer acquisition strategy should be sustainable, targeted, and diversified. 

A sustainable customer acquisition strategy works over the long run. For example, if you plan to acquire new customers through a blog, you should have the tools and resources in place to ensure content production lives past one or two posts. 

All consumers are not a company's best customers, and not focusing efforts towards the most profitable audience can result in a waste of finances and resources. 

Diversifying targeted acquisition strategies creates a balance between risk and reward. If one channel begins to fail, reallocating funds to a new channel, better-performing tactic, or another audience will be manageable.

Retention

Retention strategies are crucial for several reasons, not to mention, new customer acquisition can cost up to 25x more than retaining an existing customer.

Retention strategies should focus on customer experience tactics (UX and UI). Building more productive and meaningful relationships with the most valuable customers is now more vital than ever. While we may have had a happy customer when they were acquired, consumers, marketplaces, and competitors do not stand still and are continually moving forward.

Go-to-market

Go-to-market strategies involve preparing the assets and infrastructure necessary for the successful launching of new products or into new channels and demographics. 

PART 2: CREATIVE

Responsible creative marketing begins with data and then uses the data to tell a story. Why the consumer needs the product, why the product is unique, and what the product benefits are. In simple terms, how is the product a solution to the consumer's problems, even if they have never considered there to be problems.

Creatives are assets we use for advertising and generating leads. Development is based on data, shaping a sensible and sellable narrative. 

 "The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing." When executed cohesively across all channels, consumers interacting with a brand shouldn't feel as if they are part of a campaign. The consumer's experience should be seamless, engaging, and fun, all while moving them through their journey. 

While all creatives are well, creative, similar to Strategy, there are fundamentals to gaining a consumer's attention, presenting USPs, and compelling an individual to respond.

Once appropriately developed, it’s time to deploy the creative assets (content) using marketing tactics. While I go into tactics in more depth here, below is a primer to get your some mental juices flowing.

The Tactics

Paid

These are the channels we pay for, such as display ads, social media ads, search engine marketing (SEM), and offline ads such as television and radio. Paid ads work exceptionally well when you need to develop brand equity, gain market share, and increase revenues. They provide instant results, are easy to track, give you control over the message, and can target high intent consumers.  

Earned

The word of mouth shared by other people such as peer reviews, review sites, social media, SEO, and unpaid publicity. Since there are no advertisements to purchase, earned tends to have the highest ROI. Earned also has a dramatic effect on brand equity by increasing credibility, brand awareness, and reach. 

Owned

These channels rely on some part on the direct control of the business, such as through a website, social media, and email marketing. With blogs, SEO, and content creation, pulling in traffic through owned channels has never been better. 

PART 3: TECHNOLOGY

The digital transformation has made now one of the most exciting times to be involved in marketing. In 2011 there were 150 martech solutions. Now, a mere nine years later, chiefmartec.com reports there are over 7,000 available solutions.

According to Gartner's recently published CMO Spend Survey 2018-2019, spending on martech has jumped to 29% of a CMO's budget. Technology is now the single most significant expenditure within a CMO's budget. 

Marketing leaders are also focused first and foremost on building their marketing and customer analytic capabilities, not because of a lack of focus on customer acquisition, retention, and growth but because marketing and customer analytics is the area most underdeveloped. The need to develop these capabilities is to deliver better outcomes in the core objectives of the marketing strategy.

Along with the digital transformation also came "big data," and in today's world, the amount of data to contend with can be a bit like drinking out of a fire hose. To stay on top of the data, successfully engage with consumers, and boost ROI, the modern marketer needs a complete toolbox of technology available to them.

In almost all cases, companies typically have some level of technology implemented. Still, even if the company is a startup, the priority is to support a solid marketing strategy, and today support includes technology solutions for one or more areas of the customer journey. To be successful, a brand needs to provide the most appropriate content to a specific consumer in real-time, or near real-time.

After vetting an overall marketing strategy, the needs of the current inhouse processes and tools will begin to come into focus, as well as gaps in technology. While there is no one size fits all martech solution, there are eleven vital elements to consider. 

I won't go into the specifics of each element, but if you would like to read more details about each element, you can click through to my article,  Your Martech Isn't Complete Without These 11 Elements.

The Eleven Elements

1. Customer Data Platform (CDP)
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
3. Content Management System (CMS)
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
5. Advertising Technology (Adtech)
6. Conversion Technology
7. Email
8. Social Media
9. Automation Software
10.Analytics & Business Intelligence (BI)
11.Collaboration